Educing Information: Interrogation: Science and Art

Intelligence in Recent Public Literature

This compilation of 10 articles on interrogation methods and
their efficacy comprises the first phase of a larger project sponsored by the
Intelligence Science Board, which was chartered in 2002 to advise senior
intelligence officials on scientific and technical issues of importance to the
Intelligence Community. Robert A. Fein, a member of the Science Board, chaired
the effort by what appears to have been a truly high-powered team. Eleven
individuals with security and counterintelligence experience served on his
"experts committee," drawn chiefly from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and military intelligence units. The project also enlisted an outside
advisory group, made up of three Harvard University professors (including the
distinguished historian and intelligence scholar Ernest May), two college
presidents, a scientist with the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and a Goldman Sachs
vice president. The dozen authors of these articles include forensic
psychologists; a policy analyst; lawyers; a "neuroscience thrust
lead" (whatever that is); a computer scientist; intelligence officers; a
psychiatrist; experts in negotiation practices; and engineers. Several have
been or are affiliated with the MITRE Corporation.

In producing this introductory volume,
this body of experts has provided a very good service and my hat's off to the
board and its authors for seriously pondering the weighty issues surrounding interrogation.
But readers must first be warned: this anthology is not an easy read. Written,
as it is, by a wide array of experts, it is laden with footnotes and
professional jargon. One chapter alone offers 525 notes of legalistic overkill
by two young scholars from Harvard University's School of Law. Beyond this
challenge is the Orwellian, repellent nature of the topic itself--the
pulling-out-of-fingernails connotation that the word "interrogation"
carries. The extraction of information from unwilling subjects is obviously an
unpleasant matter. It has also been hounded by controversy ever since the exposès
at Abu Ghraib, which revealed questionable approaches adopted in 2003 by US
military intelligence officers in their efforts to elicit information from Iraqi
prisoners in Baghdad.

The odd and esoteric title, Educing
Information, is an attempt to soften the topic for potential readers, but I
doubt if it will accomplish much more than to confuse library catalogers as
well as those searching for material on "interrogation," not
"eduction." Since this is, after all, a Department of Defense
publication, acronyms in the text are inevitable, and "educing
information" is reduced to "EI" throughout the book.

In sum, the articles point to a central
finding, one not so much confirmed by rigorous empirical inquiry as it is felt
to be true by professionals in the field (the "art" side of the
subtitle, I suppose). That conclusion: pain, coercion, and threats are unlikely
to elicit good information from a subject. (Got that, Jack Bauer?) As one
writer puts it, "The scientific community has never established that
coercive interrogation methods are an effective means of obtaining reliable
intelligence information." (130) The authors hedge their bets, however, by
suggesting repeatedly that more research needs to be done on this question.
(Any volunteers for these experiments?)

As I read the volume, my thoughts
drifted back to James J. Angleton, the CIA's chief of counterintelligence from
1954 to 1974. In 1975, Senator Frank Church of Idaho led a Senate investigation
into alleged intelligence abuses. I was his special assistant on the committee,
and one of my assignments was to spend time with Angleton, probing his views on
counterintelligence. At Angleton's suggestion, he and I met weekly for a few
months at the Army-Navy Club in Washington DC. One of the key principles of
counterintelligence interrogation, he emphasized to me, was this: if you
torture a subject, he will tell you whatever you want to hear. The infliction
of pain was a useless approach-- "counterproductive," as some of the
authors in this anthology would put it. Angleton also had little regard for the
polygraph or for chemicals as instruments of truth-seeking. He was not above
using some forms of discomfort, though, such as Spartan quarters for the
subject, along with sleep deprivation, time disorientation, and exhaustive
questioning by way of a "good cop, bad cop" routine. Like some of the
authors in this volume, he believed in using a combination of rapport-building
(the good cop) and the engendering of some fear (the bad cop--although not one
armed with a pair of pliers).

If Angleton had been able to read this
book, he would have discovered a considerable corpus of research that suggests
that the induction of sleep deprivation, fatigue, isolation, or discomfort in a
subject merely raises the likelihood of inaccurate responses during subsequent
questioning. As for the polygraph, researchers in this study tell us that this
approach has definite shortcomings, but "there is currently no viable
technical alternative to polygraphy." (85)

"You shall know the truth, and the
truth will make you free," states the oft-cited Biblical injunction (John
8: 31-32) engraved in the foyer of CIA Headquarters. That is the purpose of
interrogation: trying to find out the truth from suspected
adversaries--especially truth about nefarious schemes they may be plotting that
could take the lives of American citizens. Interrogation can be an exceedingly
important responsibility that might well save a platoon in Iraq or the entire
city of Chicago or Washington. The stakes could be high.

Yet we also strongly value the protection
of civil liberties and other human rights; we don't want the United States to
turn into a Third Reich, Stalinist Russia, or today's North Korea. That is why
we spend billions each year on national defense; we are determined to shield
our democratic way of life, free from the pernicious influence of dictators,
terrorists, and thugs around the world. By agreeing to the Geneva Conventions,
we also have signaled (along with other civilized nations) that the protection
of our own civil rights requires us to respect the basic rights of others--even
enemies on the battlefield. This is not simply a matter of altruism; it is a
matter of self-interest. If you won't torture my soldiers, I won't torture
yours.

It is easy to stray from this commitment
to civil liberties. As Gijs de Vries, a Dutch former counterterrorism
coordinator for the European Union, has noted, "One of the time-honored
tactics of terrorists is to draw government into overreacting." He
cautions: "Governments should resist public pressure to pile on new
[security] measures after each [terrorist] incident.1 During
the Church Committee hearings in 1975, a key witness (Tom Charles Huston), the
author of a master spy plan prepared for President Richard M. Nixon in 1970,
remorsefully testified about what can happen when inappropriate
intelligence-collection methods are adopted by the government:

The risk was that you would get people
who would be susceptible to political considerations as opposed to national
security considerations, or would construe political considerations as opposed
to national security considerations--to move from the kid with a bomb to the
kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with
the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the
line.2

Here is the dilemma: we want to know the
truth, especially when it comes to dangers that imperil the United States; but,
at the same time, we don't want to pull out the fingernails of people we have
captured on battlefields, or spy at home on individuals of Arab or Southwest
Asian descent who are law-abiding US citizens. That's what happens in
dictatorships, not democracies, and preserving the difference between the two
types of regimes is important to most of us--all important.

Can interrogation methods be developed
that draw out information from adversaries without the use of force and other
harsh measures? The most thoughtful of the articles in this volume grapple with
this central question, but none of the authors offers a definitive answer.
Evidently even the experts in this field remain unsure about how, or if, this
objective can be achieved. Perhaps Phase II will open up new vistas.

Even in this preliminary work many
useful ideas emerge. One of the most promising research directions for
understanding how effective interrogations can be conducted within the
framework of democratic values may well be the study of negotiation theory. As
one of the authors, Daniel L. Shapiro of Harvard University, observes, an
interrogation "can be viewed as a complex set of negotiations. Government
officials have information needs, and sources have information they can
disclose. The challenge is to determine how the government can negotiate most
effectively for that information" (267)

Negotiation theory, first articulated in
the 1960s, consists, some 40 years later, of a significant inventory of
well-tested propositions. The focus has been on how individuals can develop
sufficient trust in one another to exchange information about their
preferences, then seek an accommodation of their differences. As the authors
who write on this subject in the anthology concede, they are not entirely sure
how good the fit is between negotiation behavior and interrogations; however,
their work suggests heuristic parallels and their call for more research about
the similarities makes sense.

Perhaps the most appealing and relevant
aspect of negotiation theory is the principle that one should try to learn as
much as possible about an opponent's strengths, weaknesses, fears, needs, and
aspirations. This is exactly what good interrogators try to do as well. It is
an approach that can lead to the development of a human connection between two
sides. In contrast to the adoption of harsh measures involving the use of
force, interrogations that rely on building rapport with a subject--so vital to
successful negotiations--would seem an attractive method. It has the added
advantage of comporting well with America's long-standing devotion to human
rights and fair play. As with virtually all aspects of interrogation as a
discipline of study, this rapport hypothesis has not been systematically and
thoroughly tested. The tenets of negotiation theory may provide a valuable
framework for additional scientific testing of interrogation practices.

Just as one appreciates the solid work
that has gone into this initial exploration into interrogation, so does one
look forward to further findings in the anticipated Phase II. The Intelligence
Science Board should be careful, though, not to cast its net too narrowly,
focusing only on the empirical science of how most profitably to question
subjects. While this topic is important, the board needs to pay attention as
well (as it does only fleetingly here) to the key ethical and foreign policy
implications of interrogation techniques.

Perhaps nothing has hurt America's
standing in the world so much recently as the media stories related to Abu
Ghraib, Guantánamo, secret detention centers abroad, and extraordinary
renditions. All are related to interrogation as a means of intelligence
collection. Any research team that looks seriously into the topic of
interrogation should pay closer attention to this broader picture.
Interrogation methods are not just about what works best to gather information;
they are also about what can stand the light of day from a moral point of view
in the eyes of American citizens and people around the world. For the next
iteration, the Intelligence Science Board may wish to have an ethicist on
board, and perhaps an expert or two who can look at the wider foreign policy
implications that flow from the choices America makes about how to question
detainees.

It would be helpful, as well, to have
someone prepare a more refined index in the next volume, rather than simply
offer a list of terms with dozens of page numbers that follow each item.

One can only wish the board well in
carrying forward this vital research, helping the United States find better
ways to protect itself through interrogations without throwing away its
cherished identity as a champion of individual liberties.

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